by Jake Logan
3
Two days later, they reached the Crow reservation. No sign of Snow’s people. Slocum had her ride in Kimes’s wagon so she couldn’t be snatched away by some young bold Crow buck. His outfit didn’t stay at the Crow agency but went on upstream and camped. Jasper had some fishing gear, and he sent a couple of the younger ones with it to catch some trout. Then, with iron hooks baited with earthworms, they landed several fat trout.
They even gave an old begging Crow squaw a four-pounder to eat. She left them very happy.
About sundown, everyone ate a fried fish supper. Snow never missed a thing while helping Jasper fix it. While he worked at the other food, she took a sharp knife and cut out the bone, leaving boneless slabs of trout meat. At the same time, she studied how he cooked them. He’d have bet she could do just as good the next time by herself.
Jasper fried them brown in hot lard and made German fried potatoes and biscuits to go with them. Canned peaches made a fine dessert.
They all had enough of the meal that their bellies were too full. A meal like that was what made a man like Jasper more valuable than other cooks that were available.
After supper, Slocum sat on a crate, with Snow cross-legged beside him on the ground.
“Think you can catch fish now?”
She smiled with a nod. “I will have some iron hooks, too.”
“They work good, baited with worms or grasshoppers later on in the season.”
“Oh, yes, grasshoppers would work in the moon of the ripe chokecherries. I can see that. The oil to cook them must be hot. Real hot to make the trout brown. I saw that, too.”
“If your people don’t come for you, maybe you can become a wagon train cook.”
He saw he’d needled her too much. She shed a few tears that she tried to hide from him. First time he’d caught her doing that. But she’d been his captive now for four days, going on five, and no sign of anyone to claim her. The Cheyenne would not come on the Crow reservation land to try to take her back, but in the morning his outfit would be headed farther north. No telling what would happen then. He’d expected a messenger two nights earlier to come get her—strange that no one came.
In the morning, after breakfast, they went on. She rode the bay horse by herself. She wouldn’t run off in Crow country. From here on, she was simply nice scenery to have along with his crew.
They were all horny, as they’d been back in Fort Laramie, where some found pleasure in a nearby pig farm where cast-off prostitutes worked, or taken any available Indian woman among the post’s hangers-on. The women at the pig farms were usually diseased, fat, and ugly, and some were even real old, plus there were always some crazy ones there, too. But they welcomed the soldiers on paydays, or any other time they or anyone else had the low price they charged.
Billings would be next, though Slocum knew that while they’d been camped the night before, close to the Crow capital, some of his men had found flesh favors in their bedrolls from a few Crow whores that they slipped into camp or bedded outside the circle. He’d read somewhere that there was no more than one white woman to every ten white men on the Western frontier and that the commercialization of the oldest industry in the world—prostitution—went on wholesale everywhere.
But when the real women began to appear in the West, the war to ban their sisters of the trade became an outcry on every good woman’s lips. Preachers who’d frequented such places of flesh in the past soon led the drive, with sermons from the pulpit that these daughters of Eve must be driven from among the Christian population of their towns.
They did so, even though the miners, ranch hands, and teamsters, who had no place in their lives for a wife, would thus be denied the friendly services of a dove, or any other female who understood them and knew their needs quite well. But so far the effort to bring about the demise of the flesh trade had been only a token one, as had the anti-whiskey forces’ efforts to close down all the saloons.
Slocum saddled his horse after breakfast, and they brought a saddled horse over for Snow. Still no sign of her people, but they were still too close to the Crow, and he figured they wouldn’t risk it. She joined him to eat breakfast, and her last guard made it clear to Slocum that no one had dared bother or even touch her during the night.
“Thanks, Jim,” he said to the sincere young man. His mother had raised him right.
“How are you, Snow?”
“Better, since we are leaving the land of those Crow dogs.” She made a visible shudder of her shoulders as they passed down the food line together.
He knew the Sioux and their allies—the Cheyenne, with the aid of their better-developed horse society—and others had pushed the Crow people off the buffalo-covered plains to the mountains. What one tribe called a section of their world had been stolen from another tribe. The Shoshone people had been pushed farther into the mountains by the Crow move.
Before the white man started west, the buffalo horse societies had had over a hundred-year span of their improved protein diet. So much so that their population soared. Once they got the Spanish horse, they no longer were cave people living in the Minnesota woods like the Sioux had been. With the horse and travois, they could follow the migration routes of the buffalo and eat hearty year-round.
Before then, Cheyenne and Arapaho people were dirt farmers in thatched huts along the rivers close to the Rockies. The horse made them mobile gypsies with tepees, and they became a part of the buffalo society.
At breakfast, Slocum and his crew ate oatmeal with bugs (raisins) and brown sugar. Snow delivered coffee in tin cups for the two of them, and he thanked her.
“How long will I stay with you?” she asked, seated again and ready to eat her cereal.
“Until I can get you safely back to your people.”
“I will be patient. I am glad we are past the Crow.”
“I understand.”
“When will we be to this place you are headed for?”
“A few days. We’re close.”
“What happens then?”
“We’ll camp and the men will let off steam, and I will try to find loads to go back.”
“Will it be buffalo hides?”
“It could be. They have little else to trade or sell from up here.”
She agreed and fell silent.
“It won’t smell fresh, anyway,” he said, teasing her.
“You are right. Will you ride up front today with me?”
“One of us will.”
“I feel very secure riding with you.” She waved her spoon at him.
“If I don’t have any wagon trouble, I’ll ride up there.”
“Good.”
“No one has threatened you or acted improper toward you, have they?”
“No.”
“They shouldn’t. I may find you a place to live during the time when we reach Billings. Towns like Billings have an edge of danger for Indian women, especially attractive ones like you.”
“I can’t stay with you?”
He shook his head. “Not all the time.”
• • •
Five days later, they reached Billings and camped south of the Yellowstone River. Slocum left her in camp and sought his contact at the North Plains Implement Supply. The business was on the river, and no doubt when the flow was high enough they received shipments from low-draft riverboats coming up the Yellowstone.
Standing on the dock, his horse hitched at the rack, Slocum asked a broom-pushing swamper where he’d find Jerome Tinker. The man motioned toward an office.
He thanked him and strode over there. “I need to see Tinker.”
“Yeah, well, who in the hell’re you?” the burly clerk asked.
“My name’s Slocum. I have a wagon trainload of farm machinery for him.”
The man began to look through a wad of papers. “What company?”
> “Charlie Hackett hired me. The papers are out at the wagons. Tinker was my contact man here.”
The clerk never looked up. “He ain’t here.”
Slocum looked around at all the stacks of bales and boxes in the warehouse. “When will he get back?”
The clerk shook his head like he didn’t know. “I found it. You were supposed to have delivered that in June.”
Slocum shook his head. “I didn’t get the job of ramrodding this train until mid-June in Omaha.”
“Who in the hell needs mowers for the damn snow?”
“Mister, I did not order them. I only brought them here, and I’m damn lucky to have my scalp.”
“I will need to see how this is paid for. Tinker won’t be back for a few days. Don’t ask me how many. He never said. Where are you?”
“Across the river. South. When can I check back?”
“Three days.”
Slocum frowned at him. “Beat that. It’s too long. I want to be headed south in a week.”
“Hell, I can’t do things just like that.”
“You better. Or find someone who can.”
Disgusted, he left the warehouse man, named Lonagon, and found a telegraph office. His wire to Charlie Hackett said he needed him to get these people off their asses and get him unloaded so he could head back. He signed it Slocum.
He told the man on the key he’d check back for the answer to his wire. Then he rode Sitting Bull back to camp, where Snow met him.
“You find the man?”
“He ain’t there.”
“Oh.” The shocked look on her face told him she didn’t understand.
“That’s what I thought, too.” He couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t take his freight. But he needed to find return freight and head that way, damn these pokey people. It was close to fall, and he wanted to have them back in Omaha before the snow flew. The plains between there and the Omaha plains could be bitter with cold and drifted in snow by November.
“What next?” Kimes asked, coming to find him. “Why in the hell can’t we unload?”
“Lonagon said we got here too late.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I may pile it at their doors. I telegraphed Omaha.”
“Can I let part of the crew go into town?”
“Have them back in the morning, so if we can we’ll unload and look for the freight going back.”
“I’ll divide the forces. She need a watchdog today?”
“Yes. I don’t want anything to happen to her. She has my word.”
“I’ll be sure of that. Where are her people?”
“I don’t know. They damn sure didn’t show up to claim her on the south side of the Crow business.”
“You may be stuck with her.” Kimes went off laughing. “There have been worse things than that happen.”
They replaced the wagon axle at a blacksmith shop. When they laid the new and old one side by side, the blacksmith showed them the crook in the old one.
“That’s been what’s wrong.”
Slocum agreed. Replaced, they would have that worry fixed. In the return telegram, his man in Omaha said he could collect the charges, and for him to arrange to unload the wagons there. He also understood Slocum’s concern about needing to return before winter set in.
Slocum stopped in the Elkhorn Saloon and drank a cold draft beer then picked at their free lunch counter. Fresh rye bread with sauerkraut and thin sliced corned beef stacked on it made a powerful good-tasting sandwich to match the beer. All he had to do was unload, find freight going back, plus return his captive to her people. All of it looked like a tremendous amount of work for one man.
After lunch, he told the hardware man, Lonagon, that he was unloading at daybreak and for him to have help and the doors open.
The man stuttered and finally told him he would do all that.
Slocum rode Sitting Bull out toward the hide yard and could smell it a block away. Mountains of buffalo hides were stacked all around the yard.
Charlie Griffin was the man in charge, and he shook Slocum’s hand. “I heard someone with a wagon train just got here. You looking for a load going back?”
“I am, sir.”
“Where you out of?”
“Omaha. That’s where we headquarter.”
“Can you get them there before spring?” Griffin asked.
“I can do my damndest. When will the first snow fall in Nebraska?”
Griffin blinked his eyes at him. “How in the hell should I know that?”
Slocum laughed. “That would tell you if I can deliver them or not.”
“I figure over the winter this hide market price will break. A fall delivery would make a big difference in what I can get for them.”
“I understand. I want to be back there, too. So we’ll try our damndest to get back before the big snow.”
They soon settled on a price for the hide delivery, with fall delivery worth 25 percent more than a spring one. The contract gave Slocum something to shoot for. Plus, if they made it back early, he could skitter off to Texas and enjoy San Antonio’s warm winter sunshine and all those fine brown asses that shook with their dancing and clacking castanets. What a wonderful place to spend the winter. Buried in a snowbank east of Ogallala would be the pits for him—better get unloaded and back on the road. The Alamo’s bullet-pocked walls waited for him.
4
When he rode back into camp, his captive joined him. “You find a woman in town?”
He shook his head. “I was strictly on business. We unload and reload in the next few days. How many days is your camp from here?”
She turned up her palms. “My people have no home. Not since the Custer battle.”
“We can look for them down where I got you. Someone will know where they went.”
She blew her breath out. “Gone like the wind.”
“If I can’t find them, then you may spend the winter in Omaha.” He about laughed at her pained face. “I’ll need to leave you somewhere safe.”
“Where will you go?”
“Texas.”
“Why there?’
“’Cause I like it down there. It’s warm in the winter, and they have pretty dancing girls as well.”
“Oh.”
He and Kimes talked over his plans to unload the train. The hungover bunch in town would have to sober up fast, for he had no plans to be snow- and ice-bound down on the Platte River. His lead driver agreed.
In the night they took half the rigs to town, and at sunup they began to unload them. Snow was with him, and she watched the crates of mowing machines, strange racks of rake teeth, and other equipment be moved inside the large warehouse.
“What will they do with them?” she asked him quietly.
“Cut grass and stack it for winter. Then feed it next winter.”
She shook her head in disbelief. “White men look for work, don’t they?”
With a laugh, he agreed. Then he sent her to help the cook, who was making lunch under less than easy conditions. He was fixing beef stew in a large kettle over a fire. Versatile, Jasper made things work, and Snow could stir it or help him get set up for serving it. Her being in the grumbling ex-noncom’s company, there was less chance anyone would touch her.
Lonagon and two of his clerks were marking off the items unloaded. Slocum told Kimes and some of the others that they needed to double-check that all items were marked off as accepted. Some more of the “lost men” showed up for lunch and fell into helping with the task.
By mid-afternoon, they had half of the wagons unloaded and were ready to go back to camp. Lonagon looked on the unloading as an overload for him, but he’d have an afternoon to catch up on storing the stacks of merchandise on his docks.
Slocum took his prisoner back to camp. She
craned her head around a lot looking at the passing city life. She didn’t ask many questions, but he knew she must be confused as to why people lived like this, all in one place. Back in camp, she hurried off to help Jasper, who was preparing supper.
The empty wagons were returning, and the rest would be off-loaded the next day with a full force of his men. Word was out that they’d haul stinking buffalo hides back, and no one was in a hurry to load them.
“Kency Holmes didn’t come back,” Kimes said to Slocum at supper. “He’s a good kid. I don’t think he’d quit us or got so drunk he couldn’t come back.”
“Anyone say where he was at last night?”
“Some tough bar down on the river. That was where they last saw him. The Tiger Saloon.”
“Send some of his friends over to tell me what they know about it. And Buster Johnson, he can go with me to look for him.”
Three of the younger ones were soon there, squatted on their legs, ready to fill him in on what happened.
“We never thought anything about it. He was getting in a heat over some breed girl that worked there. Her name was Pinky. We thought they went off together to do their thing.”
“Yeah.” The freckle-faced one spoke up. “Hell, when we were ready to leave we couldn’t find him or her. No one knew where they went.”
Slocum thanked them and turned to Buster Johnson. “You hear all this? That boy hasn’t been heard of since then.”
“Tough place.” Johnson spat to the side. “Bunch of breeds and cutthroats hang out there. We can go see and maybe squeeze an answer out of one of them.”
Slocum agreed and told his three scouts they were going to go look for Holmes. Horses saddled, the four of them rode into town, and Buster led the way to the saloon in shack town. Slocum had never been in this part of Billings. His men rode by the saloon and dismounted half a block away.
“Don’t want them thinking we know too much about his last habits,” Buster said.
Slocum agreed.
They went into the Last Draft first. It was practically empty, save for two skinny, ugly whores and a blinky-eyed barkeep who kept polishing glasses.